The slave hunters’ faces suddenly grew pale. The slave trader, on the other hand, was looking at me with the biggest smile on his face that I had seen so far. First there was the fact that they were being offered by the Shield Hero, which would raise their value, since the country worshipped the Shield Hero. Then there was the fact that they were notorious criminals that had slaughtered or enslaved countless demi-humans from the Seaetto territory, which was supposed to be a symbol of friendship between Melromarc and Siltvelt.

How would the Siltvelt demi-humans view such people? It would be infuriating. The living embodiment of evil to them, I’m sure. If such a person showed up on the slave market and was purchased . . . what would happen to them? It went without saying that they would be beaten and abused as a form of stress relief, just like Raphtalia and the other slaves from her village had been by the nobility in this country. This is what it meant to pay for something with your life.

“That . . . that’s not even funny! Selling us to Siltvelt?! That’s not something a hero would do!”

The slave hunter boss started raving.

“It’s not as bad as a country’s soldiers killing and selling off their own citizens. I’m sure you scumbags have a pretty good idea of the hell that these slaves have been through.”

“This is different! There’s no reason we should have to go through that!”

“So what . . . It’s okay to force it on them, but it’s not cool when it’s forced on you?”

I was at a loss for words. There’s always a chance that soldiers will die in war, yet the thought of being tortured and dying a painful death as a slave frightened these guys. Just how pathetic were they?

“Here’s a quote that I was relatively fond of back in my world, just for you scumbags: ‘Don’t shoot at people unless you’re ready to be shot.’”

It was something that some hard-boiled crime fiction detective had said. If you weren’t ready to suffer yourself, you had no place making anyone else suffer.

“Ridiculous! It only makes sense that demi-humans would suffer and die! You can’t compare civilized human beings like us to lowly demi-humans like—hrrmg!”

The guy was annoying me, so I gagged him to shut him up. The faces of these scumbags distorted with fear was a pretty glorious sight. It wasn’t quite as good as the time Trash and Bitch were forced to prostrate themselves before me, but still . . . These scumbags deserved at least this much. It was their fault that these demi-humans here ever became slaves in the first place. Now it was their turn to become slaves.